Woot

Well, well, well! We now have one Dr. R.D. Shirey in our midst. Well done, indeed! What’s more, this means that we finally get our papers back and can begin revising in earnest. However, this also means I now have five writing projects on my desk for the next week. (This in addition to the decidedly non-English review of 63 kanji et acceptable written Japanese. Komaru daroo nee!) Three of these, fortunately, are short essays, but that still works out at about 12 pages of writing, 11 of revision, and who knows how many more of the metacommentary and style portfolio.

Now, I could have started some of the essays earlier. In fact, I did begin revising Shirey’s paper and compiling my style portfolio last week. However, procrastination is a fine art. It takes a certain amount of skill and daring to begin a paper at 9:00 the night before it is due, and it also takes careful forethought and an innate sense of timing. One must perfectly judge the speed of one’s thought and typing; miscalculation, while not fatal, is certainly disastrous. Getting the timing just right, though, is wonderfully cathartic.

All of this is to say that my workload is partly, even mainly, my own doing. Ah, well. C’est la vie, c’est la guerre, c’est la pomme de terre.

CAVEAT: to my future WRPM students: never, ever, ever do what I have just described. Do as I say, not as I have done, and there will be time to work with me on your papers. If you come to me the night before with only an idea, you’re on your own.